PITCH 2016 Profiles: Hexic Monitoring Systems

On Thursday, April 28th we attended PITCH 2016 hosted by NORCAT  and it was a really great event! There were four companies pitching – Hexic Monitoring Systems, FORMid, REPerformance, and HapSys. Today we are introducing you to Daryl Dominique, owner of Hexic Monitoring Systems who won the “People’s Choice Award” at PITCH 2016. Hexic Monitoring Systems is a young startup that has created a prototype that can detect whether a genetic nut and bolt fastener is failing from under or over tightening and general wear and tear.

PITCH has been an event on my radar since it’s original inception about three years ago. I’ve been involved with NORCAT, the hosts of the event, for years now, and there’s always been a lot of encouragement for me to participate. Even with that encouragement though, I had to make sure that what I was presenting was ready for that big step and it just so happened that this year I finally felt like it was time to try and take my current project to PITCH.So I wrote up my application and nervously submitted it along with all the others, leveraging everything I’ve learned in the past few years to this new experience.

I’ve been working with two colleagues, Joshua Martin and Jorden Colwell, for years now doing prototyping and product development. We always wanted to simultaneously use our resources to develop our own products, and when I was made aware of the problem faced with manual bolt inspections and the failures associated with them, I started experimenting with ideas for solutions, brainstorming with friends and colleagues with all kinds of different concepts. It wasn’t until my fourth attempt at a solution that I hit one that worked, actually basing it off some past experience in vibration analysis, and it was that solution that has now turned into Hexic Monitoring Systems, which is the next logical step in turning this solution into a product.

You know, I’ve been so focussed on PITCH and preparing for that that I feel a bit lost in terms of the next best step. There are so many things I need & want to do but prioritizing them is certainly a tough task. The one that stands out to me is turning our functional early prototypes into something more refined to start getting this out there as an early adopter product. There’s a lot of secondary steps within that, but that entire process is definitely my next priority and one that I’m really hoping the aftermath of PITCH can help me with!